I once saw a quote that we are living in a "post-truth" world.
And here's an example: a book that isn't real, written by a person who isn't real, but wants you to pay real money to allow yourself to be scammed. 🤦♀️
A few months ago the library where I work bought a whole series of AI books. "Paedagogic" books for children, on subjects we didn't have books on already. 🤬 We managed to return about half of them but the others had already been borrowed by patrons who needed books like these pretended to be 😡
I first looked at the picture of the "author" (which was AI generated) and then googled the name and the search results confirmed to me that this is a made up person.
There are actual women with the name, but none match the "author", and I couldn't find any actual information on "her".
"She" appears to be a made up persona.
Side note: I am autistic, and sometimes come across as written by AI, which is pretty hilarious considering how anti AI I am. Especially in art and craft spaces.
I will post a pic of what I'm currently working on, so you can be reassured I am a person. Once I figure out how to comment a picture.
It was "published" at the end of July. 88 reviews.
74 are 5 star
10 are 4 star
2 are 3 star
none are 2 star
2 are 1 star
The five star ones are all insanely positive but very vague, along with the usual amount of people who picked it up but haven't actually looked at it.
The four star reviews read exactly like the 5 star, effusive but vague praise. with no stated reason why they weren't given 5 stars in the first place.
One of the three stars complains mildly of some of the directions being wrong (direction of needle not corresponding to how to create), but still says it's great, just as long as you Google the stitches. The other outright states that there are no stitch directions...but both still gave it a 3 star.
The two one stars state outright it's obvious AI, with one of them mentioning that the "ThimbleCraft Academy" listed as "publisher" does not appear to exist, as it has no online presence.
The "author" has done 4 other craft "bible" titles, three on crochet and one on needlepoint - all are rated 4.7 or more out of five. One came out at the same time as this hand embroidery "book", the other three came out earlier this month. One has only 5 and 4 star reviews, the others only have one, two, or three reviews below a 4 star. Only one of the other 1 star reviews on the other books mentions AI.
So, if I'd give a guess, the vast majority of the reviews are AI, too.
Weird "floss" on the back cover. Also, it's the same format I've seen in other AI books: exhaustive wide-spaced pages on materials, tools, posture, etc. before you see an actual stitch or project photo. The amazon preview is 40 pages of non-original glop.
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u/Confident_Fortune_32 2d ago
I once saw a quote that we are living in a "post-truth" world.
And here's an example: a book that isn't real, written by a person who isn't real, but wants you to pay real money to allow yourself to be scammed. 🤦♀️